Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Pleasant illusions vs. harsh reality

Ever notice that most people hold worldviews that are not only static and finite, but extremely pleasant as well? This, to me, seems an absurd coincidence; there are thousands of competing, concretely defined belief systems, and all of them just so happen to have pleasant connotations. Obviously, they can't all be accurate, but what if none of them are? What if they're all pleasant not because the universe tends toward pleasantness (the warm biome to freezing cold, oxygen-less space ratio is astronomical), but because they were all adopted under the modus operandi of confirmation bias? If such a meme selector is the primary determinant for which belief systems get adopted, as is implied by at least some belief systems being adopted in this manner while all of them share the quality of pleasantness, then perhaps most people are only interested in what feels good -- not in reality.

Just a thought.

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